Thursday, July 24, 2014

The Palestinian Right and the American Left (David Swanson)

The Palestinian Right and the American Left

By David Swanson

Chris Hedges says
that Palestinians have the right to self-defense in the form of
rockets, without including any consideration of whether the rockets make
the Palestinians more or less defended. There is, after all, a
reasonable argument that the rockets are counter-productive and
endangering, rather than protecting, Palestine.

Legally, if we ignore the Kellogg-Briand Pact and stick to the U.N.
Charter, much less its frequent abuse by the powerful nations of the
world, there is no doubt that Hedges is correct. If demolishing Iraqi
or Afghan or Libyan or Pakistani or Yemeni homes is "defense" of the
United States, then surely the people of Gaza, under actual attack, have
the legal right to shoot rockets at Israel. That's just basic Western
consensus with the hypocrisy removed.

"[M]any Palestinians, especially young men trapped in overcrowded
hovels where they have no work and little dignity," writes Hedges, "will
risk immediate death to defy the slow, humiliating death of occupation.
I cannot blame them."

Here are the false choices framed: either we blame the victims of
Israel's vicious and massive assault on a trapped population, blame them
for reacting as virtually anyone else in the so-called developed world
would, or we advocate for the right to fight defensive wars --
regardless of whether it helps or hurts the situation. Those are not
the only options.

I'm not sure I can prove that the rockets hurt the situation, but to
render the question inadmissible seems fatally flawed. The
justification that the U.S. Congress and White House use for arming
Israel and seeking to shelter Israel from legal consequences is always
and exclusively the rockets. The justification that Israeli
spokespeople use on television is likewise almost entirely the rockets.
In a world without the rockets, would other excuses prove successful?
It's hard to say for sure. But the rockets provide the public packaging
for Israeli war-making, accomplish virtually nothing in military terms,
and almost certainly do more to frighten and enrage the people of
Israel than to bring Israelis around to sympathizing with the plight of
their government's victims.

I've just spoken by phone with a smart writer in Gaza named Sarah Ali for an upcoming edition of Talk Nation Radio.
She explained to me quite eloquently how Israeli attacks on Gaza were
generating support for Hamas and violence against Israel. She described
the emotional need to fight back. So, I asked her if rocket attacks on
Israel weren't likewise counterproductive. No, she said, she imagined
that Israelis saw the rockets and began to understand the point of view
of Palestinians. In the absence of any evidence of that phenomenon, I
can only say that I'll believe it when I see it. In every case I'm
aware of in which one nation has militarily attacked another, it has
done far more to enrage than to stimulate sympathy in the people coming
under attack.

Of course, I have no right to tell the people of Gaza what to do or
not do from the comfort of my home in the heart of the imperial monster
that is funding their apocalypse. Of course I cannot know the situation
as they know it. But it's not clear to me that every Gazan has as deep
a familiarity with Israelis or every Israeli with Gazans as one might
imagine from their geographic vicinity. The division between these two
societies is extreme. How else could Israelis imagine children as their
enemies? And how else could those children's parents imagine that
firing rockets would win over hearts and minds?

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
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